Do aggregate economic shocks, such as those caused by macroeconomic crises or droughts, reduce child human capital? The answer to this question has important implications for public policy. If shocks reduce investments in children, they may transmit poverty from onegeneration to the next. This...

This article analyzes the extent to which the Basic Benefit Package (BBP), a subsidized health program in Armenia, increases utilization and affordability of outpatient health care among the poor. The authors find that beneficiaries of the BBP pay approximately 45 percent less in fees for doctor...

The 1997 Indonesian financial crisis resulted in severe economic dislocation and political upheaval, and the detrimental consequences for economic welfare, physical health, and child education have been previously established in numerous studies. We also find the crisis adversely impacted...

In this paper, a unique post-earthquake survey designed to provide a rapid assessment of food insecurity in Haiti is used in order to see how adequately emergency assistance programs have been allocated. When modelling the impact of various covariates upon assistance allocation, the location of...

This report provides an inventory of safety net programs in Burkina Faso and suggests policy measures that could increase their coverage, efficiency, and sustainability. It shows that the scope and coverage of the existing safety nets is too limited. Most interventions are small and temporary....

Swaziland has a number of social transfer programs, but these are not well coordinated and there is a need to better define the overall priorities of the overall safety net. Swaziland spends a significant amount on safety nets but there is room to increase the efficiency of spending by: (i)...

Social policy in Mexico has focused on identifying and supporting chronically poor households. Yet, Mexico has a significant number of households that are just above the poverty line who are not eligible, by definition, for antipoverty programs and are at risk of falling back into poverty in the...

This study estimates marginal increase in malnutrition for children ages 1-3 years from exposure to an extreme shock in the West African Sahel. The study uses knowledge of a child's birth and high resolution spatial and temporal distribution of shocks, calculated from the Normalized Difference...

Although resilience has become a popular concept in studies of poverty and vulnerability, it has been difficult to obtain a credible measure of resilience. This difficulty is because the data required to measure resilience, which involves observing household outcomes over time after every...

This paper shows that support from the family continues to be an important source of support for the rural elderly, particularly the rural elderly over 70 years of age. Decline in likelihood of co-residence with, or in close proximity to, adult children raises the possibility that China's rural...